So what’s the bugger like to ride? It needs to be remembered that the bike is a hybrid human/battery powered design firstly… not a purely electric bike.

Take a look at a trip.

I am immediately confronted with a very steep climb up the street on which I live when I leave my house. In the driveway I switch the battery system in at 12V and get the bike moving in 1st gear (of 21 gears on this mountain bike). (There’ll be a huge current gulp,so never switch in the electric power with the bike stationary.)

Then with the bike moving faster, I ratchet up to 3rd gear and select 24V power. The increase in propulsion is immediately noticeable and as I start the climb, I move up to 5th gear. However, as the bike slows with the increasing gradient,the burst of speed is short-lived I shift back to 3rd, feeling the electrical assist becoming more pronounced. The trick is not to match going so slowly that the motor is over-loaded, and not pedalling so hard that the rider is over-loaded but the pedalling speed and selected gear with the amount of electric assist!

As the hill flattens before my driveway, the bike slows still further and then when I am only just moving, I switch off the electrics and brake to a halt.

The roads on which I am riding are very hilly – too hilly for normal bikes or even for folding electric bikes, as people are often seen pushing their bikes up them. However,that is without having to stand and pedal with electric assist there is not a hill that I cannot ride up.

If you just like the idea of having another form of motorised transport, or your license has gone the way of the dodo, an electric bicycle is a do-able do-it-yourself project.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 5th, 2009 at 8:02 am and is filed under Electric Bikes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.